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0 pointsudp7y ago0 comments

> A big "aha" moment for me with node_modules was figuring out that it's an entirely separate system from npm.

I wish this was true. My workflow from back in the early days of node has always been to `npm install` external dependencies, then `npm link` (symlink) the dependencies I'm working on. But npm >= v5 removes such symlinks if I `npm install` anything afterwards. I spend a significant amount of my time re-linking what npm install unlinked.

Usually when I hit a problem like this it's because I'm things have moved on and I'm doing something wrong. But when an npm developer says "consider npm as it is to be broken" and closes the issue [1], I'm not so sure.

[1] https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/17287#issuecomment-4008339...

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danShumway7y ago

To repeat: a big "aha" moment for me with node_modules was figuring out that it's an entirely separate system[0] from npm.

Node's module resolution has nothing to do with npm. Npm is a package repository and installer built on top of node_modules. The reason your system broke is because npm cleared out your node_modules folder as part of its install. And from the sound of things on your linked issue, the devs are entirely aware of the problems this behavior causes and are planning to fix it.

An interesting exercise that I highly encourage people to do if they're finding this weird is to take a weekend and build their own version of npm just to demystify what's going on with it. It's not that hard to do, Node gives you all the tools you need - in its simplest form you need to curl whatever packages you want to install, and stick them in a node_modules folder. Then you need some way to track which packages you've downloaded. Node handles all the rest.

That npm occasionally breaks Node behavior is bad - I've been on the wrong end of those regressions as well[1] and it was super frustrating. But that doesn't really have anything to do with Node, it just means the npm team needs to test their releases more.

[0]: https://nodejs.org/api/modules.html#modules_loading_from_nod...

[1]: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/18942

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